My family of shapeshifters has a duty, passed down for generations: to block the criminal plans of another shifter family. Feels like we've been fighting forever. I have kids, and one of my sons will carry on the fight, into the next generation.

All the other fighters are occupied, so the enemy family lets their hawk-headed son fly in war for the first time. I have little choice but to send MY son to stop him. And my son's NOT a hawk... he can fly, but in some other large bird-form, less fierce and predatory. But there's no one else.

While they fight, I enter the enemy's house. Make it to the kitchen. Confront Hawkhead's father. He snatches a hot pan off the stove, flings boiling water at me once--twice. Scalding pain all down my front. I grab the frying pan (a heavy iron one) and hit his head again and again. Rage and fear... and yet I have enough self-control and awareness that I could stop.

I hit him till he stops moving, till I'm sure he can't fight. Not out to kill him, but I don't worry about it much either, not after he inflicted such agony. I'm lucky I'm not blind.

I stagger home. I can't find any curative magic, but there's a protective spell against any more burns or scalds. I read about it in the papers, later, reporting the whole story--how I used it to keep from being burned again. The magic word was Normal, Formal, Labor, Bravo, Favor, Flavor... forget.

I woke up remembering, but I fail to write the dream down; just fall back asleep.

Wake again, recalling all but the spell-words. Struggle, retrieve the word(s), at least twice--and forget them again as I slip back to sleep.

Wake and retrieve the words again, and lose them again.

Maddening!

MORNING NOTES

• Hawk-son = the Turkish leader in Virginia Woolf's ORLANDO, with son. (I saw the film version today)
• Shapeshifters = Orlando him/herself!
• Scald = on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, a black settler got burned and his white neighbors deny him care! I grew up in suburbia, where racism was subtle; though I knew shit like this happened, I was still shocked...
• Hot pan = in a Joanna Russ story, a woman from the future plans to kill someone in the 20th Century. But her victim tricks her into grabbing an iron frying pan to use as a weapon; though it's been off the stove a few minutes, it's still hot and scorches her hand. She's used to aluminum pans, which cool rapidly--her ignorance of iron burns her. Her assassination fails because she scorned to learn the details of a culture she thought primitive.
• On the other hand, in the dream I defend myself successfully with the pan. Unlike Joanna Russ's time-traveler, I understand the time I'm in. But not this inner war... what's it really about?
• All I know is it's turning really ugly. Or was. Hawkhead's dad won't be attacking me again, for a while.
• ACTION: I'm going to have to dream about this again, I'm afraid. That really hurt, but I don't even know what this inner struggle's about... and I better learn.

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